The Death of Interdisciplinary

So ok, remember how I told you about the interdisciplinary courses we used to have at my school? People from different disciplines getting together to co-teach the same course? A professor of mathematics co-teaching with a professor of music. German literature professor co-teaching with a professor of physics. I’m a little less inventive so I’m co-teaching with a colleague from PoliSci. These courses were very successful, always filled to capacity, students and professors love them. I grumble because I don’t like to lose control of my classroom but the course is actually going great. I’m learning a ton and hopefully so are the students.

Of course, resident busybodies couldn’t leave well enough alone. First, they said that we don’t need two professors to teach an interdisciplinary course. Everybody is supposed to be a jack of all trades and be able to teach across disciplines. There was protest, so they didn’t completely ban two-professor courses. Instead, they are now saying each interdisciplinary course should have one area designation. Humanities. Arts. Sciences. Social sciences. Health. Etc.

This makes it impossible to teach truly interdisciplinary courses. What do you do for German and Physics or History and Theater? So two-professor courses will be forced to die.

The point is, of course, to save money by having fewer professors teach more courses.

And once again, who came up with this idiocy? Flakey students? Evil administrators? The state of Illinois? Trump?

Nope.

As always, it was faculty members who were upset that some colleagues allegedly were getting a break on their teaching loads by sharing one course in five years with another professor.